Tremendous difficulty putting in contact lenses. One became large and spherical as I held it on the tip of my finger. It was a sort of anti-contact lens: it was eyeball-shaped, with a contact lens-sized hole just big enough to allow the optic nerve to come out of. I wondered how I was ever going to get this on my eye as I stood in a bathtub that was filling with bubbles.

The band reunited in a dirty house. There were two acoustic guitars, one without strings. The immense tedium of waiting for things to happen returned to me. Waiting for recording to start, waiting for band practice, waiting for the time to go to a gig. In a litter-strewn living room.

I was back at work, at my old job, after an absence for an unclear reason. I had been in charge of integrating a translation feature into Office Communicator. I kept trying to find Jim to ask him what the status was. I looked at it on my computer screen and it appeared to be working. John and Britt were there. Britt was telling me that a friend of hers had asked to go on a trip with her and she was annoyed, didn't want to go. Finally I found Jim as he was racing to catch his train. He said he could chat for a few seconds if I followed him. We entered a building that had a passageway to the underground station. I followed him down on the escalator, which was going alarmingly fast and was bowing and undulating under my feet. I wanted to ask him if there was anything more I should do.

I played a soccer game. I was on a team of guys my age playing a team of teenagers. They kicked our asses 4-0. Later, I recounted the game to someone. I emphasized how soundly we were beaten, making it a story of the old being inexorably eclipsed by the young. "The game started at 2 am and lasted for two and a half hours," I said, as though this made the kids' feat all the more remarkable. Then I relived the game in my head. I cursed myself for not taking more chances. I recalled making some successful passes but I wished I'd launched the ball at the goal a time or two. Then I was playing the game, but the circumstances shifted. Barack Obama was playing. So was George W. Bush. I imagined how terrible it would be if Bush were still president. He took a free kick. His personal assistant was assigned to play goalie.

A job mourning dream. Standing around with other doomed coworkers considering our prospects.

I was having a party. Someone had some pot. A weirdly thin, hot-burning joint. I took it and put it in my mouth and lit it with another joint that came from somewhere. I held it a good, long time and as I exhaled I felt high right away. A few people marveled at how much smoke I took.

"Yeah," I said, "I'm so high already my hands are sweating!" My hands were sweating like crazy.

Later, some drunk people began to fuck with some things in the house. It was my house, or more properly my parents' house. But it was, in fact, no house I'd ever lived in. People discovered some priceless housewares from Czarist Russia, things like silver salt shakers, that were packed away in the dining room. They were unwrapping them from their delicate, embroidered cloths and putting them on the dining room table. I don't know if they were going to take them or what. I was trying to contain the situation.

Later, someone stole a whole roast turkey. I felt greatly injured by this, personally injured. I discovered that it was stolen by Jay H., a notorious ne'er-do-well from my hometown. I felt a bit sorry for him then.

My dad had a book of poems by Kris Kristofferson. The book was inscribed to Kristofferson by my dad and others; the opposite, for some reason, of what you'd expect: that the book was signed by the author. It occurred to me that I'd missed my chance to add my own name to this important artifact and I resolved to do so. I paged through the poems first. One that caught my eye looked something like this:


T#% G*(s S@@t)ti!n S^%o!e

S@@al!e"! D#i$sc0u*^6t %e#er, c0&nd@y a^d c)g#@ars
S@an4d%wi%he3, s4ea!ks 9nd m$!re
C(h3ips, s9!oda, p~etze9s a7d 9as